Why No Government Should Control The Internet
Egypt is our cautionary tale:
For all the Internet’s vaunted connectivity, the Egyptian government commanded powerful instruments of control: it owns the pipelines that carry information across the country and out into the world.
Internet experts say similar arrangements are more common in authoritarian countries than is generally recognized. In Syria, for example, the Syrian Telecommunications Establishment dominates the infrastructure, and the bulk of the international traffic flows through a single pipeline to Cyprus. Jordan, Qatar, Oman, Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern countries have the same sort of dominant, state-controlled carrier.
We’ve heard of talk in the past about municipally-owned wireless internet service providers. We’ve also seen a push to give the US government greater regulatory control over the internet. To be clear, the servers that run the internet are in the United States and were our government to go rogue it could probably cripple the internet for the entire globe, but even given that our access to the internet is a fragile thing.
We take it for granted, but imagine how much of your ability to communicate and do business would go out the window if we lost connection to the internet.
Tags: big government, egypt, internet
